“The lesser-spotted wheelie-bin faces extinction”

So said Eric Pickles, sorrowfully, at the 2008 Party Conference when pledging to bring back weekly bin collections. He wanted more wheelie bins, not fewer.

This week, though, the Conservatives’ Local Government team are, once again, making a mockery of their name and demanding central action for local issues.

The Daily Mail is running a campaign against wheelie bins. I can’t quite work out why, other than they are not the most beautiful things on the planet, but at least they keep your rubbish in one place, they close so vermin don’t get in and smells don’t get out, and overall I think they are a pretty good solution to the problem of rubbish. I would rather it was kept in a wheelie bin than my kitchen. I would rather have a wheelie bin for recycling than use the non-recyclable orange plastic bags which my council provides and which end up torn and the contents scattered all over the road and the nearby park.

But Bob Neill has now announced that, “Households up and down the country are being hit by the curse of wheelie bins – an obsession of bin bureaucrats. This is all being driven by meddling Labour Ministers who seem intent on dictating how people dispose of their rubbish. This campaign will send Gordon Brown a message that enough is enough.”

I cannot repeat this enough. If the Conservatives are serious about localism, about restoring responsibility to individuals and communities and halting the ever-increasing expansion of the state, they must must must stop jumping on these bandwagons. They are contradicting themselves and by making a local government issue a national one, they are undermining the strength of their arguments for other departmental areas. Bins should remain a local matter and, as Richard Kemp of the LGA so rightly says, “There is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to bin collections.” So, local government team, please stop trying to impose one from the centre.

Related posts:

1. What happened to localism?!